Monday, July 18, 2011

During his 1996 reelection campaign, President Bill Clinton famously recounted "vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child." It was a moving story, and it helped shore up his sagging support among minority voters. It was also a lie. As the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and a variety of other publications pointed out at the time, no such atrocities had occurred in Arkansas during Slick Willie's formative years. Until recently, Clinton's church-burning whopper appeared to be the most egregious modern example of crass and cynical prevarication by a presidential candidate. It has, however, now been supplanted by President Obama's oft-repeated tale about his mother's fictional struggle with her health insurance company while she was battling cancer.

Throughout his 2008 presidential bid, Obama attributed his passion for health care reform to painful memories of his mother's battle with a health insurance company that allegedly tried to avoid paying her medical bills on the pretext that her disease predated her coverage. He used her image in a campaign ad as far back as September of 2007, and he often told the tale during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton. In a New Hampshire debate he phrased it thus: "When I think about health care, I think about my mother, who, when she was dying of cancer, had to read an insurance form because she had just gotten a new job and they were trying to figure out whether or not this was going to be treated as a preexisting condition and whether or not they would pay her medical bills."

Like Bill Clinton's anecdote about charred black churches, the story of Obama's mother was moving. And, like Clinton's tale, it was a work of fiction. Questions were raised about the accuracy of this tale as soon as Obama began peddling it, but the "news" media ignored them and he continued to repeat it even after he had been elected President. He included it, for example, in a 2009 speech to the AMA: "I will never forget watching my own mother… worrying about whether her insurer would claim her illness was a preexisting condition." And, during the height of the ObamaCare debate, he told the attendees of a town hall meeting, "I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment."

Now, the President's veracity concerning his mother's dealings with her health insurance company has once again been questioned in a new biography of Ann Dunham.Author Janny Scott writes, inA Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother, that there was never any attempt by Ann Dunham's health insurance company to deny payment for her medical bills.

Having just researched the dark side of well-intentioned “Progressivism” (early 20th century), I find this chilling. Even more chilling that the author thinks there is no need for any further laws to enable doctors to give children to foster parents? True (and sadly), they don’t need new laws but there are competing laws emphasizing unity of parent-child even when Momma is on meth. So the kids go in-and-out of our benevolent state-run foster care system. This is the same Government that gave us Social Security–an agency that GIVES YOU MONEY for being “morbidly obese.” This is the straight-thinking State that is going to seize children from parents? God help us.

In the view of these Ivory Tower academics, The State sees something bad and swoops in to save the day. We normal human beings have been “Waiting for Superman” but Supermen already exist at the Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital and Harvard’s School of Public Health (the home of the JAMA authors)! Supermen and superwomen exist in DCFS agencies around the country. If only these angels ran the government, there would be no “super-obesity,” no anorexia, no bad behavior at all! Their strategy would eliminate “obesigenic environmental influences” (yes, “obesigenic” is jargon in their world).

The authors are careful not to “blame the parents”; they mention environmental factors but downplay genetics. Their Progressive predecessors took the next step to deal with the genetic angle: selective sterilization to weed out “imbeciles.” The State still has that power, but our authors assure us, state power over our bodies will only be used in extreme cases. (Buck v. Bell is the 1920s-era case that gives government the right to sterilize in the interests of “public health.” The Supreme Court has never overruled it. See my book Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader).

Disclosure: I was a “super-obese” teenager at 320 lbs. My brothers were normal weight. My parents urged me to limit my diet but I ate secretly. Then, on my own, I lost 140 lbs in a single year and have kept if off for 28 years (I’m 10 lb over my 21 year old weight). That was my decision. Imagine if the know-it-alls in DCFS had put me in foster care, supervised by my new rotating parents and caring social workers. Yes, children, this is our Brave New World fast in the making.

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........I am a Vietnam Era veteran (both parents were wartime vets, as is my brother and most other male relatives and ancestors); we all joined. I’m now disabled, and the only war zone I was sent to was East Oakland. I worked ambulance there and in other places for over a decade, and I have worked under sniper fire. I’ve worked with police at least half of my working life from the EMS side. I’m also a lifelong martial artist, and started training informally (while they were cross-training) with Seals at age 15. I grew up on military bases, then served on them myself. I was also a Senior electronics and mechanical design drafter in the Aerospace industry.

........I reject the argument that only cops can judge other cops. Per other cops, however, like Norm Stamper, former chief of police in Seattle (during the 1999 WTO conference) has said that there is an alarming increase in conditioning of police to view “civilians” as The Enemy. Agents provocateur have been caught at such venues throwing rocks, bottles, starting fires etc. to provide an excuse for an ARMY of black clad, heavily armed, armored militarized cops to attack even the most peaceful crowds. “Free Speech Zones” are constructed well away from any wealthy and powerful people who might otherwise have to hear or see protesters (I don’t remember Free Speech Zones being mentioned in the Constitution, either). Injury or death from police, very often police with no identifying badges or anything else so that people don’t know they’re police, is getting far out of hand and increasing as many officers have come to think they can give citizens ANY order and expect to be obeyed instantly, else they’re justified in a violent attack on the citizen. In fact, too many cops seem to think that a lack of abject groveling is “disrespect,” and grounds for attacking the person. And as with this case, no matter how egregious the violence visited on an innocent citizen, police are not held accountable for what would be first degree murder by anyone else.

The Executive has claimed powers even kings didn’t have in murdering citizens, and Intel agencies are virtually unbound in who they can spy on, when and how, while a citizen who dares try to film a cop in the act of performing what he conceives to be his duty is being criminalized, and cops are almost routinely stealing and destroying such evidence. Jefferson said that for clarification of the Constitution, always look first to the Declaration of Independence. When the phrase, “…All men are created equal,” was penned, then, since the Constitution itself put no limitations on rights, I’ve always believed that not just American citizens but anyone in our custody (and perhaps those especially!) had the rights enumerated in the Constitution and in other law in America. If not, then the Constitution and the Declaration were just so much drivel and worthless paper. Those rights belong to human beings, period!

Among other things the Executive has mentioned lately is the need for military to “help out in the case of civil unrest” and other such things. That would be illegal per Posse Comitatus; cops who are armed, dressed, trained and conditioned exactly like military – an occupying army by any realistic definition – is NOT illegal because they’re still being CALLED cops. The core missions of military and police are 180 degrees different, though. Military are taught to protect themselves and their buddies first; they’re also taught to KILL. That’s what they do. When cops are militarized, the ones who would have put themselves between a citizen and a bullet, those who really believed in “To protect and to serve” are ready to shoot first, just in case and no matter where any extra bullets happen to go. That’s part of WHY the military doesn’t do police work.

SWAT teams are military. Call ‘em whatever you like, but they’re damned well DEADLY, and they’re being VASTLY overused! SWAT teams need to be drastically cut back and their former members should be given the choices of becoming real military, retraining for police work as COPS, not pseudo-military, or finding other work! A man legally owns a firearm so that makes him a potential danger and SWAT must be used? How many Americans are killed every year because someone lied to get a warrant or went to the wrong damned house? Hundreds at the very LEAST! And what response other than grabbing a weapon to meet unknown home invaders – especially after his wife’s family’s experience – does anyone expect at that time of day and under those circumstances? That Guerena DIDN’T fire shows how well trained he was! That the cops DID open fire (and I never heard that “accidental” first shot, btw, or a shouted “ID”) also says something about their training and mind set. And as always there were lies by the police involved that were straightened out one by one, finally – with no consequences.

The finding that the SWAT team was not at fault – with the wrong warrant, (wasn’t this a wrong address again too?), spraying bullets all over a residential neighborhood, entering incorrectly so most of them were blinded to the indoors, the door to which they were blocking… Come on! This was a long chain of error after error, starting with using SWAT for this in the first place. It’s a sickening incident that is happening more and more frequently in this country when it should only EVER happen in a dictatorship! Think about THAT for a minute!

Letting him lie there and bleed out for over an hour until he finally died before allowing a paramedic near him, however, was murder, the ultimate CYA that has always put the best witness beyond questioning and any inconvenient answers. There is no other word, no other motivation, no possible excuse.

The errors were not Guerena’s, and Mr. Miller should be applauded for wanting a better outcome or at least an honest discussion of what went wrong instead of the official whitewashing by Those In Power. Attacking him for not being another mindless, nodding bobbleheaded follower says a lot about the local Republicans, I’m afraid, and NONE of it is good! Until this head-in-the-sand whitewash and then the attack on the one man who dared to question it, this didn’t necessarily reflect badly on the rest of the police or the area; it’s something that is happening too frequently all over the country. NOW, however, you’d better believe it reflects badly – on all of you! At a time when the Drug War is finally coming to be seen as the propaganda and profit-driven, wrong-headed war on the public it is, this stands out as an egregious misuse of power TWICE: first, when SWAT was used for such a purpose, and second, when every official in the county save one honest man acted like a cat trying to cover up on linoleum – with about as much success.

Brock Townsend – You’re more than welcome to post them wherever you wish, with or without attribution, and thank you for the compliment! This is info that desperately needs to be spread around. It’s happening all over the country far too often to be accidental – these are execution squads, and our militarized cops are being readied for use in martial law. I see no other possibility. And this murder is an absolute obscenity. Would you be willing to let me know where you post them? I’d like to see any reactions. Hopefully it might help me in writing other things.

So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and thecries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Unionmeans so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means theloss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the rootof this as of many many other evils … the quarrel between North andSouth is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.

– Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodicalin 1862

“This is still very real to us,” said a Sons of Confederate Veterans Member.

That had become very apparent to me.

Last Thursday morning, I visited a cemetery that the Gaston County Sons of Confederate veterans are rehabilitating.

I had gotten the assignment earlier in the week. And was both excited and apprehensive about it.

I’m a New Yorker born and bred. Proudly. And I make no bones about the fact the slavery played a part in the Civil War.

Sure, it was in part about states rights and federal powers, but it also had a lot to do with slavery.

At the same time, I’m a history dork, and the idea of hanging out with other history dorks makes me happy.

The morning did not quite go as planned. My car wouldn’t start and I got lost, so I was late. And all the Sons of Confederate Veterans knew that I was from NY because they so my license plates when they came to check on my car.

One of them acknowledged that I was in for a bit of culture shock. I’d always been curious about how the Civil War was taught in Southern Schools. I was guessing a little differently than how I’d been taught.

I met Mr. Hamm, who put himself in charge of telling me the Southern story. He told me that was the group’s mission, was to make sure that Southern Side of the War for Southern Independence was told. Mr. Hamm has the distinction of being an actual son of a Confederate soldier.

When they told me this I had a hard time believing him. The math just didn’t add up. But it actually works. Mr. Hamm’s father served in the War in his early teen years. And then fathered him in his 80s. Obviously, this is unusual, but it’s true.

I knew a lot of what Mr. Hamm told me about. He mainly talked about Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus. I had actually written a paper about that very topic in high school.

While I didn’t agree with the slant he was presenting, I couldn’t argue with his facts. Mr. Hamm and his fellow camp members are incredibly well-read. And I have a lot of respect for that.

And they do a lot of good when it comes to historical preservation. I’m not just talking about “preserving” the Southern story. They reason I met with them is for their cemetery rehab project. It’s a 18th century cemetery, filled with Revolutionary War vets.

Their commander explained that his group is a “historical honor society” and said restoring a cemetery is a natural extension of this idea.

"When cartoons contain too much truth to be funny."=================================================

Monday, July 17, 2011

Issa, Grassley Press for Answers from FBI, DEA in Fast and Furious Investigation

WASHINGTON – Representative Darrell Issa and Senator Chuck Grassley are pushing for additional information and documents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in relation to the two agencies roles in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) reckless strategy known as Operation Fast and Furious. The strategy employed by the ATF allowed firearms to be purchased by known straw buyers and then transferred to third parties where the guns often crossed the border to Mexican drug cartels.

The letters are a follow-up to a recorded, transcribed interview with Acting ATF Director Ken Melson. The Acting Director was interviewed by congressional investigators on July 4 where he corroborated several details that included other agencies involved in Operation Fast and Furious.

In the letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Grassley and Issa asked about the “veracity of claims” regarding the possible involvement of paid FBI informants in Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically at least one individual who is allegedly an FBI informant” and “might have been in communication with, and was perhaps even conspiring with, at least one suspect whom ATF was monitoring.”

The letter to DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart requested a briefing by DEA staff as well as “the number of informants or cooperating informants handled by other agencies identified in the course of any investigations related to Operation Fast and Furious.”

In addition, both letters (to Mueller and Leonhart) asked for communications of several members of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force who were working in coordination with the ATF to conduct Operation Fast and Furious.

“I am a soldier. I serve my country. But this is not my country.” –Von Stauffenberg as played by Tom Cruise.

That line hooked me for the entire Valkyrie movie. I’ve watched it three times over the Summer. It’s important for viewers to understand some of the history behind Germany’s military oath at the time, how it had been changed under Hitler, and how his death was required to symbolically release their obligation. I’m not sure how quickly that would’ve worked since as the old saying goes “men go mad in groups, but only regain their sanity one at a time”. At least killing the dictator would’ve been a start.

The movie is old news. I didn’t watch it when it was at the theaters, nor did I rent it as a new release. I waited until it was a used DVD on the 4 for $20 rack. I was only somewhat familiar with the history behind the actual bombing attempt, but I’ve heard the movie was criticized for some minor inaccuracies. That is to be expected when history moves from the recollections of the people who were there to the authors and screenwriters who weren’t even born yet who want to satisfy their contemporary audience. No matter the event, every day that passes is a step away from the point in time witnessed by the living. Only cultural memory lives past the original survivors.

TUCSON - Members of the Pima County Republican Party have voted out their party chairman. Brian Miller came under fire, from fellow Republicans over comments he made, about a deadly SWAT team raid. Party leaders asked Miller to resign but he refused and Friday night his fellow Republicans passed a rule to force him out.

They voted on two questions. First, they to adopted a rule that let them oust party officers. Then, they voted to oust Miller.

A year after she was paralyzed in poolside horseplay at her bachelorette party, Rachelle Friedman knows one thing she would change about her life before the injury.

"I wish we had danced together more because I love dancing so much, and we didn't do it enough," she says of her soon-to-be husband. "Looking back, I would have done it every night."

Friedman will finally make it down the aisle on Friday, marrying the man who has waited with her to exchange vows since the accident. She is wearing the same gown she chose for the first ceremony but with her father pushing her wheelchair down the aisle instead of walking her down it, arm in arm.

Also joining her will be the bridesmaid who shoved her into the shallow end of a pool on May 23, 2010 - causing a freak accident that changed their lives. The 25-year-old from Knightdale has stuck with her friend and refused to reveal her identity even as newspapers, television and Internet sites carried the story around the world.

"She was tragically hurt, mentally and emotionally. And I was tragically hurt, physically," Friedman says on a day that a tailor is altering her strapless, simple wedding dress to fit her new, thinner, less muscular body. "It's harder to deal with when you're hurt emotionally sometimes than when you're hurt physically."

Of the 2 million military voters covered by the report, 15.8 percent requested absentee ballots, but only 4.6 percent cast absentee ballots that were counted.

15.8% requested, 4.6% counted = 29% successful or 71% unsuccessful.

Most of the states did a good job counting the ballots they actually got back - the overall acceptance rate was more than 94 percent.

Looks like ballots aren't making it to the troops, they're not filling out the ones they get or the ballots aren't making it back to the states. From my personal experience, when I went to the trouble to request an absentee ballot, I always filled it out and sent it in. I don't know what's going on here but forgive me if I suspect that there's voter supression in action.

... military voters were (28% as)* likely to vote than other voting-age citizens (in the 2010 election)

Before I start on this weekend’s reports I wanted to mention an interesting report about how few law enforcement agencies track how many of their officers are convicted of criminal misconduct by Alia Wong from the Honolulu Civil Beat. She did a good job trying to present both sides of the issue which included references to the NPMSRP.

Passaic NJ secretly settled a lawsuit for $350k to mentally ill man beaten on video by cop later acquitted of criminal brutality charges, the settlement appears to have contained a confidentiality clause. [3] http://bit.ly/qU7Hmq

Washington DC arbitrator says cops can’t be fired just because past misconduct makes their testimony untrustworthy when he forced the department to rehire the 5th officer fired for that reason. [5] http://bit.ly/qn8wPL

Quartzsite AZ police chief accused of abusing power to punish political foes, own officers beg for investigation, this is the same police chief who declared martial law in response to critical response to a video showing him and a fellow officer kicking a reporter out of an open council meeting when she had the floor. [3] http://bit.ly/ncMgzZ

Remembrance

To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached.

As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
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My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
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My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
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*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
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*The Attack On Fort Stedman
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"His Colored Friends"
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Lee's Surrender
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My Black NC Kinfolks
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Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.